Lee Child - Personal

He said, ‘What’s it to you?’

‘The FBI released some figures. Research and analysis. Back home. The average distance for a successful handgun engagement is eleven feet.’

She lowered the Glock.

She took a step forward.

Charlie said, ‘I’m already closer than eleven feet.’

She took another step.

I nodded. ‘Just saying. It’s trickier than it looks. But it needn’t be. People overcomplicate it. Better just to relax. Make it natural. Like pointing a finger. That way you can’t miss.’

She took another step.

Charlie said, ‘I’m not going to miss. Although maybe I should. Deliberately. Maybe I should wound you first. That might learn you a lesson.’

She took another step. She was nine feet away.

I said, ‘I don’t need no education.’

‘You need to learn some manners.’

Another step.

She was seven feet away.

I said, ‘Don’t worry about me, Charlie. I do OK.’

He said, ‘Maybe you did OK in the past. But you ain’t doing so great now.’

She straightened her arm. Her gun was four feet from his back. At which point I started to worry. About a whole bunch of different things. He would smell her. He would smell the gun. He would sense some kind of a disturbance in the air around him. Some primitive instinct. Seven hundred years of ancient evolution for every year of modernity. And if she fired from four feet the through-and-through would nail me, dead on, just the same as if he had fired.

I looked him right in the eye and I said, ‘One second from now I’m going to fall down on the floor.’

He said, ‘What?’

And I did. I let go and fell like a coat coming off a hook and she fired into his back from four feet, and I saw a spit of flesh and blood splash out from the front of his chest, and the feature window behind me shattered, and I landed next to the woman in the towel, who stirred in her sleep and hooked a loose arm around my neck and kissed my ear and said, ‘Oh, baby.’

LESS THAN TWO minutes later we were in the back of a mint-green Vauxhall. Up front was the couple who had delivered the computers. The man and the woman, both still quiet and contained, both still happy with their short-straw assignments. Good team players. We had left Bennett at Joey’s house, and I didn’t expect to see him again.

We had gotten on the East Anglia highway right out of Chigwell. The M11 motorway, as it was called on the local signs. We were heading for a Royal Air Force station in a place called Honington. Which was near a place called Thetford. Ninety minutes, Bennett had promised, but I figured it would be less. The woman was driving extremely fast. The land all around us was flat. Strategically Britain was an aircraft carrier permanently moored off the coast of Europe, and there was plenty of space for flight decks.

RAF Honington turned out to be a big place, mostly shrouded in darkness. The woman drove through gates and straight out to the tarmac. Just like the SEAL at McChord, which all seemed a long time ago. She drove the same kind of well-judged part-circle and came to a stop at the airplane stairs. We got out, and closed our doors, and the mint-green Vauxhall drove away.

The airplane was the same kind of thing as O’Day’s Gulf-stream, short and pointed and urgent, but it was painted dark blue, very shiny, with a pale blue belly under a gold coach line, and the words Royal Air Force above the windows. A man appeared above us, in the oval mouth of the cabin. He was wearing an RAF uniform. He said, ‘Sir, madam, please come up.’

Inside there was no butterscotch leather or walnut veneer. Instead the leather was black, and the veneer looked like carbon fibre. It was severe but sporty. A whole different flavour. Like a modern Bentley, maybe. Like Joey’s. The man in the uniform told us his last passenger had been royal. The duchess of somewhere. Cambridge, maybe. Which started me thinking about MI6 again, and MI5, and everything in between. Nice and I sat across the aisle from each other, but facing, head to toe. The man in the uniform disappeared, and a minute later we were in the air, climbing hard, heading west to America.

We were given a meal, and then the guy in uniform retired to some discreet compartment, and left us alone. I looked at Nice, across the aisle, close enough to touch, and I said, ‘Thank you.’

She said, ‘You’re very welcome.’

‘You OK?’

‘About Charlie White? Yes and no.’

I said, ‘Concentrate on the yes part.’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Believe me. The way he talked about that girl. I heard him, from downstairs. They took pleasure in tormenting her.’

‘Plus the firearms and the narcotics and the payday loans.’

‘But we shouldn’t be judge and jury and executioner all in one.’

‘Why not?’

‘We’re supposed to be civilized people.’

‘We are,’ I said. ‘We’re very civilized. We’re riding in a duchess’s airplane. They didn’t rule the world by being nice. And neither did we, when our turn came.’

She didn’t answer.

I said, ‘You proved one thing, at least. You can operate in the field.’

‘Without pills, you mean? Are you going to tell me to quit again?’

‘I’m not going to tell you anything, except thank you. You saved my life. Take all the pills you want. But be clear about why, at least. It’s a simple chain of logic. You’re anxious, about your professional performance and your mother, but only one of those is a legitimate worry, therefore you’re taking the pills because your mother is sick. Which is OK. Take them as long as you need. But don’t doubt your skills. They’re separate. You’re good at your job. National security is safe. It’s your mom who isn’t.’

She said, ‘I’m not going to join the army. I’m going to stay where I am.’

‘You should. It’s different now. You know what really happened. You just moved up a step. You’re harder to betray.’

We flew on, chasing the clock, but losing, and we landed at Pope Field at two in the morning. We turned and taxied, all the way to the small administrative building with 47th Logistics, Tactical Support Command on it. The engines shut down and the guy in the uniform opened the door and lowered the stairs.

He said, ‘Sir, madam, you need the red door, I believe.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. I pulled out the fat rolls of British money, from Romford and Ealing, and I gave them to the guy. I said, ‘Have a party in the mess. Invite the duchess.’

Then I followed Nice down the steps, and through the dark, to the red door.

The red door opened when we were still six feet from it, and Joan Scarangello stepped out. She had a briefcase in her hand. She had waited up for us, but she wasn’t about to admit it. She was trying to look like she was just heading home after a long day at the office.

She stopped and looked at me and said, ‘I take it back.’

I said, ‘Take what back?’

‘You did very well. The British government is officially grateful.’

‘For what?’

‘Your input helped their operative achieve a very satisfactory conclusion.’

‘Bennett?’

‘He states in his report he couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘How long were we in the air?’

‘Six hours and fifty minutes.’

‘And he’s already written a report?’

‘He’s British.’

‘What couldn’t he have done without me?’

‘He took Kott off the board inside a local gangster’s house. Where he went solely at your suggestion. Hence the gratitude. Along the way he was forced to neutralize a number of gang members, including two really big names, and so Scotland Yard is grateful, too, and because of what he wrote some of that will rub off on us, so all in all I would say we’re heading for a period of glorious cooperation. Our London operations will be better than ever.’